Equity in the Built Environment Is P.O.W.E.R.F.U.L.
Core concepts and key questions that anyone can apply in furthering equitable design and development of built spaces
By Paul D. Bauknight Jr. and Mary-Margaret Zindren, CAE | January 18, 2024
An equitable built environment serves the wide array of fundamental human needs and aspirations, thus nurturing healthy communities that grow, thrive, and are sustained over generations. Our individual self-actualization is both supported and limited by the health of every community we are connected to—communities of people and communities that are place-based. In this way, pursuit of an equitable built environment and healthy communities is in our common interest and in our self-interest. Concept by Mary-Margaret Zindren. Illustration by Hannah Edwards.
2023 PRINT ANNUAL
This feature appeared in the 2023 ENTER print annual, available for purchase here.
Property owners, architects, designers, developers, planners, funders, community leaders, and residents all have regular opportunities to shape the built spaces of their communities—and they can do so in ways that promote equity and justice.
Definitions and descriptions of equity in the built environment are often either oversimplified and narrow (i.e., accessibility, affordability, and cultural resonance, at the building scale) or so expansive and complex as to be overwhelming.
Here we have worked to boil down core concepts of equity in the built environment in ways that are both wholistic and easy to remember. Taken together, these concepts can be combined to further fair outcomes and repair past harms. In a word, they are P.O.W.E.R.F.U.L.
POWER
Recognize who has been historically excluded from positions of power by policy and practice—and who has historically wielded disproportionate power compared to their population in community—and work to democratize power. Move along a continuum from traditionally marginalized communities having development done to them, to done with them, to done by them; have this sensibility drive the role of community members in design and development processes. Also, recognize your own power in the systems related to the built environment; the expertise and experience you bring, your relational power with people who hold sway, and your role-based power to influence whose voices are heard and heeded.
OWNERSHIP
Discrimination related to land ownership and having land forcibly taken are perhaps the most consequential ways that generational wealth building has historically been denied to people of color and Native Americans. Women, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ+ people have also faced discrimination in home ownership and lending practices. Recognize that approaches offering people with lower incomes opportunities for home ownership without the opportunity to own land have created housing stability but often not generated wealth. Remove barriers to outright ownership, as well as to the formation of cooperatives and other types of fractional ownership, for people historically and presently affected by redlining, racial covenants, and biased lending practices.
WELL-BEING
Make good on the obligation to create spaces that protect the health, safety, and welfare of the public.Design and develop built spaces with understanding of the well-documented positive impacts that the built environment can have on well-being, as well as with understanding of related disparities based on race, physical ability, gender, and sexual orientation. Prioritize indoor and outdoor air quality, accessible green space and play space, and opportunities for social gathering and joy. Address current and future impacts of climate change and threats to physical safety faced by women, people of color, religious minorities, and people who are LGBTQ+. Repair past harms, including racialized, intentional, and under-addressed concentration of environmental hazards in low-income areas.
Recognize that there is no substitute for representation in the process of shaping spaces; empathy alone is less likely to result in widely resonant development and design solutions, and one representative of a particular group cannot carry or convey a multitude of perspectives.
ECONOMIC BENEFIT
Varying levels of expected return on investment (ROI), and the timeframe for that return, tend to drive what gets built, for whom, and in what ways. Change the goal from accumulating capital to sharing capital equally with others as a path to building wealth and generating positive community impact. Make greater investments in climate-focused adaptation, resiliency, and regenerative design solutions to bring environmental, social, and economic benefits to communities. Create financial incentives for developers and owners to prioritize electrification and energy efficiency and to pass along generated cost savings to those who use or rent built spaces. Prioritize economic stability and economic benefit for those who were destabilized and denied such benefits in the past.
RESONANCE & REPRESENTATION
The extent to which built spaces feel like they were designed with you in mind—whether they meet your needs and feel welcoming to your culture and other aspects of who you are—greatly affects the time you want to spend in those spaces and the care you bring to them. Recognize that there is no substitute for representation in the process of shaping spaces; empathy alone is less likely to result in widely resonant development and design solutions, and one representative of a particular group cannot carry or convey a multitude of perspectives. Include and compensate a wide range of people who reflect the makeup of today’s and tomorrow’s populations on the development and design teams.
FUTURE FOCUS
Creating and sustaining the built environment in a way that centers equity requires courage and foresight. Make decisions--—and support the decisions of others—that will bring as much (or greater) benefit to future community members as to current stakeholders. Anticipate the adaptation that will be necessary to meet changing community needs—adaptation in terms of the range of resources people will want to easily access and in how built spaces can be designed with the intention of repurposing and regenerating materials. Actively seek ways to scale up your development and design solutions to address larger systemic forces of social, racial, economic, and environmental injustice, to secure a more stable, prosperous, and healthy future for people and the planet.
UTILITY
The ability of people to meet their basic, everyday needs without undue burden of time and money is core to equitable development and design. It requires attention to how a built space relates to not just others in immediate proximity but to the broader network of built and natural spaces. Explore how a built space fits into the fabric of community needs and desires. From access to groceries, healthcare, jobs, and schools, to restaurants, gathering spaces, and places for children to play, examine what is available, what is precarious, and what is missing. At all levels—building, site, neighborhood, city—address the differing needs of people of various ages, abilities, and disabilities to easily access and use spaces in ways that are safe and truly respectful of difference.
LEADERSHIP
The work of creating equity in the built environment is more proactive than reactive. See when leadership is needed and find the leader within you to take action. Leadership related to the built environment is also inherently collaborative and facilitative in nature. Bring humility, curiosity, and adaptability to your engagement with others. Seek to understand non-Western concepts of leadership to be able to recognize, support, and demonstrate a variety of leadership approaches. Work to gain the trust, respect, candor, and good conflict needed to create equitable solutions in the built environment. Advocate not just for the project itself but more broadly for the people and the natural world you seek to positively impact through your work.
P.O.W.E.R.F.U.L. Questions
Applying these concepts in the work of design, development, planning, funding, and leadership starts with asking good questions. Anyone involved in shaping the built environment can foster equity by seeking answers to questions like these.
How can planning, design, and implementation approaches shift power to those historically undercut or discounted? How can the public, private, and philanthropic institutions involved democratize power?
How does the history of land ownership relate to this project? How can sole or communal ownership be attained by people long barred from this opportunity?
How can well-being be furthered by this project? How might the project contribute to healing and joy for people who have experienced discrimination and trauma?
Which people and organizations are most likely to benefit financially from this project? How can economic benefit be strengthened for those historically denied access and opportunity?
Who feels connected to this place? How can a representative project team help ensure feelings of belonging for people whose wants and needs have not been prioritized in the past?
How can this project anticipate changing community needs and climate impacts? How can our work scale up to address larger systemic forces of injustice to benefit future generations?
How can this space work well for people of all circumstances, identities, and abilities? How does it connect and augment broader systems (e.g., green space, transportation, housing, education, health)?
Where can I lead in this work? How can I support diverse leadership approaches? How can my advocacy for people and the planet remove barriers to actualizing this project’s potential?
Paul Bauknight Jr. in Farview Park in North Minneapolis. Photo by Chad Holder.
Core Concept: Spatial Justice
By Paul D. Bauknight Jr.
One of the most important concepts of equity in design and spatial justice is that both physical space and architecture are social constructs. As Edward W. Soja put it in “The City and Spatial Justice” (2009), “Space is socially produced and can therefore be socially changed.”
We also need to focus on the relationship—the dialogue—between the social and the spatial. Soja, again: “The spatial shapes the social as much as the social shapes the spatial.”
The broad public, policymakers, and community leaders across the world have awakened to how true this is in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The social changes brought on by the pandemic are shaping how we use our homes and how our cities function. Many city leaders are right now rethinking commercial office towers and the spatial organization of cities in response to the fundamental paradigm shift in social interactions related to how and where a lot of work now gets done.
The evolution of the suburbs after World War II is a study in this dialogue between social and spatial. The suburbs were brought about by massive changes in our society. The spatial design of car-dependent, single-family neighborhoods contributed to the idea of the American dream of everyone being able to own a home and enjoy the “good life.” But this good life was not equitable, as it was a life supported by racist and inequitable policies and systems put in place by the federal government and maintained by state and local authorities. BIPOC residents could not participate fully, or at all, in this American dream.
We also need to focus on the relationship—the dialogue—between the social and the spatial. Soja, again: “The spatial shapes the social as much as the social shapes the spatial.”
These examples point to the importance of understanding that the root of inequity in design—spatial injustice—imposed on certain geographies or populations is systemic and institutional racism. Our ability as designers to change this reality means that we must engage in the radical reimagining of these systems and institutions along social, moral, cultural, and political lines.
In the first chapter of their new book Spatializing Justice: Building Blocks, titled “Confront Inequality,” Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman write, “All urban and architectural initiatives today must begin by confronting the institutional mechanisms that exacerbate social and economic disparity . . . At bottom, inequality is an institutional attack on human dignity, supported by social norms and deployed through deliberate economic agendas that spatialize segregation, racism, and exclusion. Urban violence is a direct consequence of disinvestment and neglect. How can our design fields collectively confront urban asymmetry? All urban and architectural initiatives today must begin by confronting the institutional mechanisms that exacerbate social and economic disparity. Inequality is the axis around which our political stance as designers should be organized.”
This is a powerful statement that reinforces the hard reality that architecture is formed by these inequitable systems and that architects must be willing to challenge and change them. Whitney Young Jr. challenged the profession in the same way over 50 years ago in his famous speech at the AIA convention where he pointed out that we are a profession distinguished by our thunderous silence.
The realities of the world in which we live—continuing social and racial unrest, climate change, homelessness, a growing wealth divide, distrust in our institutions and our neighbors, and much more—means that those involved in shaping the built environment can no longer be silent on issues of inequality. In their book, Cruz and Forman lay out 12 drivers of inequality, including erosion of the safety net, racism and segregation, housing unaffordability, and concentration of economic and political power.
These drivers are all parts of social, economic, or political systems; the work of architecture and development exists in and is influenced by all of them.
Architects and designers are incredibly knowledgeable and talented individuals. They have the capacity and ability to bring their special skill sets (creativity, ability to vision, and command of systems thinking) and networks (professional and social connections to civic and community power) to the challenges we face today.
We can design our way to more just city, town, and rural environments, but to do so, we must focus on designing more just systems.
Publications & Resources
Architect’s Role in Creating Equitable Communities
American Institute of Architects, 2022
Equitable Development: Principles & Scorecard
The Alliance, 2022
Equitable Development Frameworks: An Introduction and Comparison for Architects
American Institute of Architects, 2021
The Just City Essays: 26 Visions for Urban Equity, Inclusion, and Opportunity
Edited by Toni L. Griffin, Ariella Cohen, and David Maddox, 2015
Justice in the Built Environment: Supplement to the Guides for Equitable Practice
American Institute of Architects, 2021
Spatializing Justice: Building Blocks
Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman, 2022
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